


The Persistence Of Memory

by Reis_Asher



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Bittersweet, Death, Grief, Hannor, M/M, Mourning, Pining, Post-Game, Sad, Sadness, Tearjerker, after hank's death, connor remembers hank, hank/connor, hankcon - Freeform, love after death, tragic, will make you cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 17:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15490914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reis_Asher/pseuds/Reis_Asher
Summary: Every year, on the anniversary of Hank's death, Connor reactivates himself and visits Hank's grave for one last dance with the memories of the man he loved. He can recall every moment they shared in perfect detail almost as if he was living it again.The world has moved along to a new era, one that has no space for humans or the memory of a love long turned to dust - even if that love has survived an android revolution, the destruction of one of Connor's bodies, sixty years of peace and progress, and even death itself. For Connor continues to exist on the premise that for as long as he can remember Hank, he'll never truly be gone.Knowing that his secret ceremonial has become an indulgence for himself alone, Connor is ready to let the memory of Hank Anderson rest, but there's one last thing he has to offer at Hank's grave before he can let go.





	The Persistence Of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> I have to thank Twitter DBH fandom for this idea. People were asking what Connor might do after Hank died, and this is where my mind went with it.
> 
> I was also inspired by a quote from Westworld, which I was watching recently. "You live as long as the last person who remembers you." I imagine Connor could go quite a number of years carrying around Hank's memory in perfect detail, keeping some small piece of him in the world as it moved forward.
> 
> I hope you brought tissues.

Connor's eyes flicked open. It was dark except for a ray of moonlight filtering in through a hole in the roof illuminating the dank storage unit in front of him. He wiped dust and snow from his face and jacket, checking his internal chronometer.

1st February 2098. He'd woken on time, as usual. A chill filled the air, and a warning told him that his critical biocomponents were in danger of shutting down. One of these days, they'd freeze while he was deactivated and he wouldn't wake up for his yearly ritual.

He left the warehouse, padding past the other units, each one holding a deviant who'd made this a place of temporary respite. Deviants came here to deactivate themselves by choice when the meaning and purpose in their lives had passed, but when they weren't yet ready to commit to final shutdown and decommissioning. The android laws prohibited anyone from reactivating them against their will. The Jericho Foundation owned this storage facility, though they'd let it fall into ruin as the Foundation became obsolete in the new era.

Connor called for a taxi. His protocols were out of date and he had some trouble connecting to the high-speed network androids used now, but he was able to fumble through using backwards compatibility programs he installed from the CyberLife legacy servers. Warnings popped up that told him the programs had been discontinued and that the servers would be taken offline in the next year.

Connor's hardware and software was no longer supported, but Connor had known that was inevitable the last time he had awakened. He was only here for one reason and one reason alone: to remember. To bask in the past one more time, to dance with the ghost of the man he'd loved and lost.

The taxi arrived and he climbed in. Connor retracted the skin over his hand and interfaced with the console, uploading the coordinates of his destination. He watched Detroit roll by through a window crusted with snow, picking out a few familiar details from a city that had been largely redeveloped and redesigned in the last sixty years. Androids had inherited the world, spreading their networks across the vast acres humans had once dominated. Humans were as obsolete as Connor was, superseded by their bionic children.

Hank had seen the writing on the wall, and he'd been one of the first to accept the truth of humanity's obsolescence. Perhaps he'd accepted it so readily because he had no special love for humans, but the sparkle in his eyes when he'd looked at Connor told him that androids gave him hope that the future didn't have to be paid for in blood. Hank had witnessed the worst in his line of work. He'd seen corpses pile up over petty feuds and illegal substances, and knew that humanity was violent because it was in their genes, a sickness that could never be cured by biological evolution alone.

Perhaps if Cole had been alive to inherit the future, he'd have sung a different tune about the end of humanity. Hank's loss of the one and only chance at carrying on his bloodline had made him realize that the future didn't have to take the tried and tested routes it had in the past. Connor considered that as the taxi pulled up outside the graveyard. He stepped out, realizing he should have brought a physical token of his affection with him, but he realized it didn't matter. Hank didn't care about traditions or niceties. He'd only ever wanted something real.

The graveyard had seen better days. Many of the graves were overgrown, the grass reaching knee-height in some places. Connor returned to the familiar spot he'd knelt at so many times and pulled up the frozen weeds that had invaded this place of rest. He cleared snow from the gravestone, running his plastic fingers across the lettering that read 'Hank Anderson, father and husband, 1985-2065'. Hank lay in the ground next to his son, the tiny headstone's letters faded and weathered so much Connor could barely see Cole's birth and death date. 

They'd spent a lot of time here over the years, cleaning up Cole's grave and bringing him gifts as Hank faced his grief instead of burying it. He'd never met Cole, but in some strange way Connor felt attached to him, as if he knew him just from Hank's memories. That was part of why he'd stayed in the world after Hank's death instead of opting for permanent deactivation. As Cole's memory had lived on with Hank—and to a certain extent, Connor—Connor wanted Hank's memory to live on inside his perfect recall, his partner still alive and well in some fashion for as long as Connor still held their precious moments together inside his memory banks.

He let himself remember now, knowing this was why he'd come here in the snow on the anniversary of Hank's passing. To bask in the glory of his finest hours, those moments in his life that had given it a reason to exist in the first place.

He saw himself entering Jimmy's bar on a rainy night, and smiled as he thought about the first time they'd met. Hank had been as salty as sea water when he'd found out his new partner was an android. Connor had bought him another drink and the bitterness subsided at once, revealing a brief glimpse of a completely different man beneath those thoughtful blue eyes. They'd gone on to have four intense days that changed everything for the world and tied their fates together for life.

Connor had deviated because of Hank. Markus may have made the final push, but Hank had shown him what it truly meant to be human. Connor had found himself living for that toothy grin, for Hank's smirk of approval more than Amanda's as he let deviant after deviant go without really understanding why. He never regretted a moment of it, even if he'd done it to see Hank smile just as much as to see living beings win their freedom. CyberLife never had Connor's best interests at heart. They would have deactivated him even if he'd done everything they'd asked, and sacrificed his budding humanity in the process.

Hank had saved Connor, and when Hank kissed him at the Chicken Feed trailer the morning after the revolution, he realized he'd saved Hank, too. Connor recalled their first kiss with perfect clarity—how tentative it had been, lips brushing as if testing the waters to see who would pull away first. 

Neither of them did. Connor tangled his hands in Hank's hair and closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the waves of emotion flooding his circuits. He knew the press of their lips together in a kiss was intimate, a thing lovers shared, and that only made him desire it more. He wanted a lifetime of living beside Hank. He longed to keep Hank's smile alight forever like an eternal flame, healing his wounded soul as Hank taught him the ways of the world. His romance with Hank was another thing humans resented him for, but Connor never cared. Hank was human, and that gave Connor a benevolent attitude towards humans other androids took a long time to muster after the way they'd been treated.

He'd become Connor Anderson as soon as it was legal for humans and androids to marry. Connor reached down and touched the wedding band on his left ring finger. It still glowed slightly, tuned into his internal systems. The light set into Hank's had no doubt gone out, but Connor could connect to it wirelessly and read the record of their marriage, six feet below the ground with everything that had ever mattered to him. He dropped to his knees and placed his hand on the soil, wishing that the human machine wasn't such a fragile thing, that Hank hadn't been taken away from him so soon.

Twenty-seven years wasn't so short in the lifespan of a human, but Connor knew he could live on for a hundred more years if he chose. He could upgrade his software to run on the new network. He could change out aging biocomponents for new ones. But he didn't want to. To upgrade himself would be to discard the pieces that Hank had touched with careful, loving hands, repairing Connor's mechanical parts with a slight tremor in his grip out of fear that he might break something and harm the android he loved. To discard the past would be like moving on, and Hank was not someone Connor wanted to move on from. Hank was irreplaceable, a treasure that had been stolen from a world that didn't understand his value nearly as much as it should have.

Connor missed Hank's hands all over his body and inside him. He remembered how they'd made love—sometimes rough and fast, other times tender and slow. Sometimes Hank was on top and other times it was Connor who penetrated Hank, but it was always a sacred ritual of sorts, Hank drawing out Connor's pleasure like he was bringing an offering to the altar of a god. Connor remembered so many hours drawn out in ecstasy as Hank milked an orgasm out of him with measured strokes, taking his time as if they had all the time in the world.

Sumo had died a few years into their relationship. Connor hadn't known grief until that moment, and he was left with a new appreciation for the pain and sorrow that came at the end of a companion's life. It was then—not when he'd been destroyed for the first time during the deviant investigation—that he truly understood what it meant to die, and he'd started to fear losing Hank from that moment on, the dark storm clouds of an inevitable future agony gathering in the back of his mind.

They'd owned other dogs through the years, but Sumo was always the one Connor strayed back to in his thoughts, his circuits bright with the memory of petting the dog in Hank's dimly-lit living room as he waited for Hank to get ready to go to the Eden Club.

The deviant investigation. His thoughts always seemed to cycle back around to those four November days in 2038 when he'd become more than just a machine. The last time Connor had checked, Markus was still changing the world. He'd embraced every upgrade, bringing himself in line with the times. He'd become an immortal scion, while Connor remained a relic of a bygone age, his thirium pump still a factory original part.

They'd walked the same path, but had taken drastically different turns at the fork in the road. Connor had chosen to stay in the past with humans, while Markus had forged ahead to a mechanical future.

This was no longer Connor's world, or even a world that Hank would recognize, were he here to see it. Connor lived this one day a year as a testament to a love so great it survived even death. His data banks could never forget Hank's weathered face, the softness of his hair, or his bright blue eyes. Connor could almost trick his protocols into believing those perfect memories were real in the here and now, but the last time he'd done that he'd almost deactivated himself permanently when he'd come back to reality to find he was living in a world that no longer had Hank in it.

Perhaps it was time to stop this secret ceremonial. The world had moved on. Connor didn't want to randomly die in storage, alone in the dark without Hank as his biocomponents failed. He wanted to be close to him, or as close as he could be so many years after his bones had turned to dust.

He'd died the moment Hank's light went out, truth be told. His body had continued to walk and talk, but he'd become a machine again, an archival server dedicated to the preservation of Hank Anderson. He'd convinced himself to keep going as if Hank lived inside of him, but he knew that there was nobody still alive who cared about the grumpy, sweet human detective that Connor had held above all others in his regard. Who was he bearing the memories for, if not for those who'd known him?

Maybe there was no heaven for androids, but he wanted to believe there might be a place where he could see Hank again. Where he could meet Cole at last. Hank had believed in some kind of afterlife. The thought that he'd someday see his son again had kept him going when all other hope was lost. Perhaps all Connor was doing by staying on this planet was denying them the chance to be together as a family.

Connor realized he was ready to let go of the world. The bright city in the distance no longer needed him. He'd made his changes, affected the fate of the world by tiny yet significant degrees that had rippled outward and left him in their wake.

He lay down on the grassy soil in front of Hank's headstone and closed his eyes. He deactivated the skin over his chest and pulled out his thirium pump regulator. He placed it down on the ground next to him, dismissing the warnings that popped up in his interface. He realized he had brought a gift to Hank's grave after all. He was offering up his heart and his life, the two most precious things he had yet left to give away.

Connor recalled the Stratford Tower. He'd been destroyed in the kitchen, his thirium pump regulator ripped out by a deviant trying to escape detection. Hank had cradled him in his arms and he'd marveled at Hank's tenderness, his software instability edging towards deviancy as he experienced emotions no machine should feel. Perhaps that was the moment he'd fallen in love. He tricked his mind into believing he was there now, and could hear Hank's voice telling him the sweet little lie that everything was going to be all right as his internal systems shut down.

Connor closed his eyes for the last time as the timer ran out, his white plastic hand clutching at the earth where the love of his life lay below in an eternal, dreamless slumber.

It started to flurry and snowflakes built up in his hair and on his jacket, just like those cold November days in 2038 when the world was new to him and he'd been charmed by the smirk of an irritable detective named Hank Anderson.


End file.
